Typically, in a modern wireless communications system, a plurality of cells or evolved NodeBs (eNB) (also commonly referred to as NodeBs, base stations, base terminal stations, communications controllers, and so on) may be arranged into a cluster of cells, with each cell having multiple transmit antennas. Additionally, each cell or eNB may be serving a number of users (also commonly referred to as User Equipment (UE), mobile stations, terminals, and so forth) based on a priority metric, such as fairness, proportional fairness, round robin, and the like, over a period of time. It is noted that the terms cell, transmission points, and eNB may be used interchangeably. Distinction between cells, transmission points, and eNBs will be made where needed.
Usually, the eNBs may be arranged close to each other so that a decision made by a first eNB may have an impact on a second eNB. For example, the eNBs may use their transmit antenna arrays to form beams towards their UEs when serving them. This may mean that if the first eNB decides to serve a first UE in a particular time-frequency resource, it may form a beam pointing to that UE. However, the pointed beam may extend into a coverage area of the second eNB and cause interference to UEs served by the second eNB. The inter-cell interference (ICI) for small cell wireless communications systems is commonly referred to as an interference limited cell scenario, which may be different from a noise limited cell scenario seen in large cell wireless communications systems.